


Third Wheel

by grey2510



Series: Misc SPN Works (<15k words) [65]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Canon Universe, Chuck is a shitty writer, Gen, Post-Episode: s15e04 Atomic Monsters
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-19
Updated: 2019-11-19
Packaged: 2021-02-13 14:11:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,240
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21495580
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/grey2510/pseuds/grey2510
Summary: Becky was right: he needed to write. When his story with Lilith doesn't go exactly the way he'd planned, Chuck decides to liven things up with a new character in the boys' path.
Relationships: Dean Winchester & Sam Winchester
Series: Misc SPN Works (<15k words) [65]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/250114
Comments: 13
Kudos: 27
Collections: SPNColdestHits





	Third Wheel

Chuck frowned at the computer screen. Lilith had destroyed the Equalizer, so yay, mission accomplished, but it hadn't shaken out the way he'd expected. Scratching his beard, he got up and went into Becky's kitchen. The fridge was depressingly healthy: vegetables and fruit and lunch-box-ready cheese sticks… And there was the bottle of cran-apple she'd mentioned. Sighing, he snapped his fingers and the Keurig started pouring out a heavenly—no pun intended—roast into a white World's Greatest Dad mug that hadn't been there a moment before. In Chuck's defense, it looked like something that the kids probably would've given Mr. Becky Rosen anyway.

Properly caffeinated, he returned to the desk and settled himself down at the computer. Absently, he rubbed the wound in his shoulder and hissed through his teeth at the pain. Destroying the gun hadn't been enough.

He read back through the motel scene, before Lilith had to knock Dean out and get herself abducted. It should have worked without her having to magic the situation up. Seduction, the pills—they were right up Dean's alley!

Ok, maybe Ashley/Lilith had been a bit too...innocent for Dean. Sure, she had cute and blonde going for her, but she hadn't had that sassy _je ne sais quoi _that Dean seemed to like. And Lilith always did like the little girl routine… Hm. Obviously that wasn't going to work.

Chuck opened up a fresh, new document.

Plan B.

* * *

"You ever work a case like this before?" Dean asked, lining up his next shot. The cue ball nicked the three, sending it towards the corner pocket. It hit the edge and bounced back. Frowning, Dean straightened up and stepped back from the table, letting Jenny take her shot.

Jenny McClane was thirty-two, looked like she'd raided Pamela Barnes' wardrobe, and had swaggered into the bar and sat herself down at Dean and Sam's table to introduce herself as a hunter who'd been working on the case ever since she rolled into town two days ago. She claimed she'd recognized the Impala—the Winchesters were pretty famous in certain circles—and that she wasn't sure what she'd rather talk about: the hunt or classic cars and rebuilding engines.

Dean and Sam weren't rookies, but a quick call to Garth put them in touch with his buddy Myron, who had confirmed Jenny as a legit hunter. After that, it hadn't taken them long to end up at the pool tables, where Jenny was currently kicking Dean's ass.

Jenny smirked at him before bending over the pool table. She would probably be better off going for the eleven into the side pocket, but Dean had a feeling she had other motivations than pool at the moment. Not that he had any objections to the view, on principle.

Sam, who was leaning against the wall with his arms crossed, rolled his eyes. Dean ignored him. It wasn't like he was going to make a move or anything, so sue him if he looked.

The nine ball she'd been aiming for bounced off a couple of bumpers before sinking neatly into a pocket. Jenny grabbed the chalk, then moved to her next shot—the eleven.

"No, but I figure it can't be that hard, right?" Jenny replied, watching as the eleven rolled smoothly into a pocket. "Probably witches. They're a dime a dozen these days." She gestured to the right of Dean. "Eight, corner."

And the eight ball sailed right in, easy peasy.

"Two out of three?" he asked, slightly put out. She was _good_. It wasn't often that he met someone who could wipe the floor with him.

Jenny just smiled as she came up to him, running a hand down his arm. "Sure thing. Rack 'em up. I'm gonna get a beer."

Sam cleared his throat and pushed himself off the wall. "You two have fun. I'm going to go research."

"Killjoy." Dean began racking up the balls. "C'mon, we can play Cutthroat instead."

Sam paused by the table, brow furrowed. "Really? No 'Don't wait up, Sammy' with some stupid-ass grin on your face?"

"What? I can't want to hang out with my brother?"

Sam picked up Dean's beer from the table and sniffed it. "Who _are_ you? Someone drug this?"

He snatched the bottle back and took a hearty swig. "Fuck you."

"Pretty sure that's Jenny's plan," Sam muttered before plastering on a friendly smile that Dean could see right through.

"You heading out?" Jenny asked as she returned, sidling up to Dean. He fought the urge to take a step back. She pouted and turned her big brown eyes on Sam, but he just shook his head, obviously as unconvinced by the act as Dean was.

"Yeah, sorry. I'll see you guys in the morning." With a wave over his shoulder, Sam wove his way through the tables to the exit.

"Guess it's just the two of us now," Jenny purred.

He gave her his best charming grin. "Lucky me."

* * *

The phone alarm went off at 6 am, and Sam groaned into his pillow before flopping over to turn it off. He cracked an eye, regretting the choice instantly when he realized he'd rolled exactly into the bright line of sunlight coming through the split in the motel room curtains.

"Shudoff th'damn 'larm."

Sam's eyes flew open and he blinked in surprise, seeing the familiar lump of his brother in the next bed. He fumbled for the phone and finally silenced it.

"What time did you get in?" Sam asked through a yawn.

"I'unno. 'Leven? M'night?" Dean's voice was still buried in a pillow. "No twenny quesh'ns."

Sam frowned as he sat up. That was an early night for Dean, especially considering the signals Jenny'd been giving. And he must have crashed hard if he hadn't even heard Dean come in. Shrugging, he reached for his duffel bag and started pulling on his running shorts.

* * *

"Oh, turn it up!" Jenny said from the backseat of the Impala as they drove the ten miles or so to the outskirts where they'd heard their bad guy of the week (who was likely a necromancer, not a regular witch) had bought an old farmhouse, despite living in an apartment in town.

Dean and Sam exchanged glances, but Dean still reached over and turned the knob, letting "Enter Sandman" fill the car. He let his eyes flick up to the rearview mirror. Jenny was dressed again today in tight black jeans and work boots, but the patterned grey tank top she'd been wearing yesterday had been replaced with one that was plain black, covered with a dark red workshirt. Her thick, brown hair was pulled into a loose braid that draped over one shoulder.

"Metallica fan, huh?"

"Mhm," Jenny nodded, sinking back into the seat before singing the chorus low and slightly off-key.

"Still better than you," Sam said under his breath.

"Shut up."

"What was that?" Jenny asked.

Dean shook his head. "Nothing. So, uh, Jenny, how'd you get into this gig anyway?"

There was a tense silence for a moment.

Sam cleared his throat. "If you don't want to—"

"No. It's fine." She breathed deep. "It was my sister. She, um. She was psychic. Never worked on me—dunno if it was a twin thing or what. But she got...powerful. Mean. She could control people and it was… And then…"

They didn't need her to say it; they'd heard it before: someone got hurt. Or killed.

"Your twin sister?" Dean asked, just to break the uncomfortable quiet. "Did you ever have any psychic powers or whatever?"

She laughed bitterly. "No, I'm the boring one. And yeah, I know how it sounds: evil psychic twin."

Sam pursed his lips before asking, in what Dean knows as his FBI-consoling-the-victim's-family voice, "What happened to her?"

"I did." In the mirror, Dean saw her cross her arms, hugging herself, as she looked out the window. "Trapped a bee while she slept. Hid the Epi-Pen. Amazing how something so small can hurt so much." She wiped a hand over her cheek, just below her eye. "I couldn't let her..."

"Yeah," Dean said. It was all he really could say.

Sam stared ahead through the windshield, saying everything without uttering a single word.

* * *

The necromancer was dead, and they were four states away and two hunts later when Sam finally got a chance to pull his brother aside. Hunting with Jenny had made sense when they caught wind of a shapeshifter situation in Kentucky, which was the direction both parties were heading anyway. It'd been good having back up, especially since it had been a family of shapeshifters causing problems.

But the vampire case they were on now? This was bush league and for the life of him, he couldn't figure out why Jenny was still tagging along. It wasn't that he disliked her, he just...didn't get it.

She was bringing her A game with Dean, but Sam was pretty sure nothing had happened beyond her pretending to make out with Dean while they were staking out the back alley, waiting for one of the shapeshifters to appear. Every morning, Dean was in the bed next to Sam's, and Dean barely showed any interest in her, except for his normal I-flirt-with-everyone-it's-how-I-say-hello.

They were in the car, Jenny's truck following them, when Sam decided to bring it up.

"So. Jenny."

"What about her?" Dean absently drummed a thumb on the steering wheel to the rhythm of "Against the Wind" playing on the local classic rock station.

"She sticking around for good now?"

Dean's thumb stilled and he looked over at Sam. "I dunno. Why?"

"I just." He paused, trying to put a finger on it. "I can't figure her out."

"She ain't complicated, Sammy. Shit childhood, became a hunter."

"That's just it." He turned in his seat towards Dean. "You're really telling me you don't think it's weird that all of a sudden, some hunter we've never heard of shows up and she's sassy and likes classic cars and all the same music as you and can kick your ass at pool—"

"Hey, I won a few times."

"—and she's got a fucked up childhood where _one sibling killed another_?" He could feel his voice rising, so he took a breath. "That's—"

"Straight out of Chuck's playbook?" Dean finished. He jabbed at the radio, cutting off Bob Seger. "Yeah, that's what I thought, too."

Sam shook his head. "And you didn't say anything?"

"What was I supposed to say? C'mon, you know we were both thinking the same thing ever since she told us her evil twin sob story."

There were days that Sam wished he could strangle his brother, and the irony of the situation was that doing so during a relatively normal day while driving down a rural highway would probably just piss off Chuck even more because it wasn't enough of an action-packed soap opera moment.

"So all this time, you've just been letting her hang around—and all over you—_knowing _she's probably one of Chuck's bullshit stories?"

Dean shifted in his seat. "Look, we've been running in this rat maze our whole damn lives. We know what he wants. Lilith straight up told us. We got nothing—you still have a busted shoulder and freaky visions, the Equalizer got melted, Cas is in the wind—"

"Which we still need to talk about," Sam cut in. He _knew_ Dean knew more about where Cas was or why he had left or why he wasn't answering any of their calls or texts, but so far his brother had stonewalled all conversation about it.

Which was what he continued to do right now.

"—And I figured, hey, we know Jenny's a plant, might as well keep her around. Go Godfather on the situation."

"What, send God to sleep with the fishes?"

Dean gave him a what-the-hell look. "No, dumbass. Friends close, enemies closer. Only thing we're getting out of your nightmare-o-rama visions is all the ways Chuck thinks we should off each other. Jenny's the closest thing we got to an inside man."

Sam considered this, settling back against his seat again. "You could've told me."

"What, you thought I was gonna dump you and run off with some chick I don't know?" Dean shrugged, then half-grinned. "Then again, she doesn't think that the hipster-pop crap you listen to counts as music, so it might be worth it."

"Asshole." Sam sighed with a small laugh. "So you're really not interested in her?"

Dean looked surprised. "Jenny? Nah. Not what I'm looking for." He turned the radio back on, but Bob Seger was done and the Stones were painting a red door black. "Plus, she's like a cross between Jo and Claire. And that's just…" He shook his head. "Pass."

"Fair 'nough."

While he would have preferred to be in on Dean's scheme from the start, it was reassuring to know they were on the same page overall. It wasn't an ideal situation, but there wasn't much they could do about Jenny at the moment. The music played on, Stones switching to Zeppelin, and the trees blurred by outside his window for a few miles before something Dean said wriggled its way forward from the back of Sam's mind.

"So what _are_ you looking for?" he asked, with a slight teasing edge to his voice, though he really was curious.

Dean snorted and cranked up "Kashmir."

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Coldest Hits: [this month's prompt](https://spncoldesthits.tumblr.com/post/188092005779/november-2019-prompt-the-mighty-mary-sue-posting).
> 
> This might be the hardest thing I've ever written. Everything I came up with about Jenny, I was just like THIS IS SO STUPID. But that's the point. Fucking Chuck, man...
> 
> Check out my other works (sorted by series for easier navigation):  
[Grey's works](http://archiveofourown.org/users/grey2510/series)  
Come visit me on Tumblr! @[grey2510](https://grey2510.tumblr.com/)


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